


and yet we survive

by of_poppies_and_rust



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, Past Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 13:39:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17746898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/of_poppies_and_rust/pseuds/of_poppies_and_rust
Summary: Time heals all wounds, but wounds leave behind scars. No one knows that better than the Winter Soldier.





	and yet we survive

The Winter Soldier’s body is littered with memories, from the raised and shiny patch where metal meets flesh to the thick, ropy ridges that run across his torso. He has survived things that would have killed a lesser man. 

 

The Russians would stitch him up if his life were in the balance, but sometimes they would let the wounds sit. They would take notes on how long it took for the blood to clot, for the raw, red flesh to knit back together, and then they would open it up again. Just because they could. Just because they  _ wanted  _ to. 

 

There is one scar in particular that the Soldier remembers well. He remembers the scalpel carving ever so slowly into his skin, slicing him open from shoulder to waist, again and again and again and again and-

 

He snapped the surgeon’s neck. He remembers the bones cracking beneath his fingers.

 

They pumped him full of drugs and sent him under, and when he woke they had learned to use steel cuffs instead of leather.

 

* * *

 

The Soldier has forgotten a lot of things: how to live without pain, without fear, without emptiness and cold. 

 

He is trying to remember now.

 

He follows the man on the helicarrier from a distance, watches as he eats his dinner and wonders why the way he drinks his soup is so familiar. Something about it tugs at the edges of his mind- there was a boy once, a thin and frail boy with a scar on his cheek, in a winter before the Soldier when the heat was out-

 

The memory hits him all at once, leaves him gasping with the force of it. 

 

They were always cold in that stupid brownstone in the winters. When they found salt pork to bring home, they’d make soup and down the whole pot in twenty minutes, the warmth reawakening their bundled limbs. 

 

The man from the helicarrier drinks with the same desperation, wipes his mouth the same way. His hands are stronger, less bony, but still cup the bowl like that boy. The boy with the scar.

 

The Soldier reaches for a name that turns to mist as he grasps it, and beyond the windowpane, the man steps out of sight.

 

* * *

 

_ Steven Grant Rogers,  _ says the sign at the museum.  _ American Hero. _

 

Bits and pieces are coming back. As the Soldier wanders the exhibit, a cap pulled down low over his face, he begins to recognize the men in the photos. In the corner, Morita, and on the left, Jones, and plastered across the screen-

 

The Soldier sucks in a breath, because that’s  _ him. _

 

He’s standing next to the man named Steve, laughing at someone out of the frame. 

 

_ Captain Rogers and James Buchanan Barnes after Azzano. _

 

He looks… happy.

 

The Soldier stares at the video numbly, watches himself laugh. It loops again, and he watches even closer this time. Enough to catch the movement of Steve’s lips and read what he says.

 

_ Bucky. _

 

The Soldier  _ knows. _

 

It was Dugan outside the frame, telling jokes he’d heard in bars to every soldier he could find. Steve had begged to hear one, and when Dugan complied it was just so goddamn awful that nobody in the vicinity could keep a straight face. Dernier nearly dropped the camera when he was doubled over, half in tears. 

 

The first scar, the one that follows the Soldier’s spine, had still been an open wound then. It was crusted and sore that day, despite the cooling ointments the medics had smeared on it. His ribs were bruised. His muscles ached.

 

But he had laughed anyway, though his body protested, because he knew he had already begun to heal.

 

“Bucky,” he whispers in a voice rusty with disuse. 

 

The syllables fit, as if he’s said them a thousand times before, and the name settles into his body like the hot, young blood of Brooklyn in his veins. He remembers the August haze, the lingering scent of sweat and dirt in a back alley, the snowball fights with the kids in the tenement down the block. 

 

The Soldier is littered with memories, but so is Bucky Barnes.

 

* * *

 

Steve traces the scar across Bucky’s chest with his thumb. ”Tell me what you remember.”

 

“I remember everything,” says Bucky, rolling over to face him. 

 

Here, in Steve’s bed, the Soldier has no place. His body, his mind, is his and his alone. 

 

Steve likes to hear Bucky talk about their life before the war.  _ Tell me what you remember,  _ he’ll say, and then he’ll curl up at Bucky’s side and press his lips to the white, fading scar at his spine as Bucky tells a new anecdote. Sometimes he’ll chime in, adding details or prompting Bucky when he forgets what happens next. Other times he just chuckles softly and lets the tale run its course.

 

“Your scars,” Bucky begins. “You had so many. The one on your cheek-“

 

“Knife fight in ‘37.”

 

“-the one on your right arm-“

 

“Smashed beer bottle in the back alley.”

 

“-the one on your knee-“

 

Steve shrugs. “Tripped.”

 

“Prolly ‘cause of the newspapers,” Bucky grins. “I’d always bring you home covered in bruises and mud, and your ma would sigh and feed me apple cake while I waited for her to clean you up.”

 

“You always loitered in the kitchen,” Steve reminisces. “Coulda gone home, but you never left till you knew I was alright.”

 

Bucky lets his gaze wander over Steve’s body, his tanned skin and chiseled face. He’s changed so much since their youth. All the old scars are gone, erased by the serum and replaced with new ones that have just begun to disappear. His eyes are flinty, more jaded than they used to be, and to say he’s bulked up would be a bit of an understatement.

 

And yet underneath Captain America’s golden exterior is Steve Rogers, the five-foot-one boy from Brooklyn with a list of ailments long enough to wrap around the block. 

 

Bucky thumbs the spot on Steve’s cheekbone where the scar used to be. “‘Course I never left you alone. You were sixteen and scrawny and I loved you anyway. Wasn’t gonna leave without sayin’ goodbye.”

 

Steve’s expression is soft in the moonlight, his hand resting at the junction of skin and steel. “You loved me then?”

 

“You know damn well I did,” Bucky snorts, “and you know I love you now.”

 

“Shame I didn’t know back then, or I woulda kissed you sooner, cause I’ve loved you since that damn knife fight.”

 

“Kiss me, then, punk. You waitin’ on something?”

 

Steve cups his face and pulls him in. “Nope.”

 

And when their lips meet, chaste and sweet, it makes all the pain worth it. They have outlived winters, and they have gone to war as soldiers, and they have lived a century together and apart. 

 

But, kissing in a bed in a Brooklyn apartment, they are everything they once dreamed they could be.

**Author's Note:**

> Whew! This was the product of two hours of frantic typing during a drive to New York. The idea came to my head while I was at a rest stop in Delaware, and the rest of the story just wrote itself. I hope you liked it!


End file.
